Measuring Firms' R&D Performance: an exploratory study on sectoral differences in R&D performance

기업의 R&D 성과 측정 : 산업간 차이에 대한 탐색적 연구

An efficient and productive R&D operation is a major source of competitive advantage in today's economy, and a lot of efforts are made to raise R&D productivity. A prerequisite for making R&D more efficient and productive is to be able to measure it. Hence, a number of studies have attempted to measure R&D productivity. R&D productivity, in the previous studies, was measured with patents at the firm or industry level. However, most previous studies considered only a quantitative aspect, not a quantitative aspect of patents. In this study, various dimensions of patent quality as well as patent quantity were considered for the measurement of R&D performance. The differences in R&D performance across sectors were examined, and it was found that electrical/electronic industry shows higher R&D performance than mechanic and chemical industries. Discriminant analysis based on inputs and outputs for R&D shows' that there exist a strong discriminatory power across industries. The results of this research can provide the directions 'for the firm's R&D policy.